


Finally Found

by LogosMinusPity



Series: Whenever You Are [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 01:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10206326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogosMinusPity/pseuds/LogosMinusPity
Summary: Ana returns from the “dead”, rejoining the new Overwatch. But her return unburies a host of issues between mother and daughter, and Fareeha struggles to reconcile just what her relationship has been with her mother, and what she needs it to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Finally getting this bad boy out! Took quite a bit longer than anticipated courtesy of my muse running off for a little while, but I'm pleased to have finally pushed it together. I wanted the opportunity here to explore a bit of the relationship between Ana and Fareeha (because it's utterly loaded and very difficult), as well as have the fun context for some good moments of Pharmercy. Hope you all enjoy, and thanks for all of the support! 
> 
> Cheers!

Angela was running down the hallway from the medical bay, her research now the furthest thing from her mind and her communications cell clutched in one hand. The message that had bleeped on it not even a minute earlier was still blaring through her head, at odds with everything that she had accepted as fact for so long now.

That alone was frightening enough, almost too frightening to think on deeply.

Was it really possible? Could it really be true? It had been so, so many years. To think they had been wrong this entire time, that they really could have done something more...how could they have not known?

The double doors swung wildly on their hinges as Angela barged through, breathless, then stopped short in the conference room.

“Ana…?”

Her incredulous whisper was lost beneath the outpouring of excitement and tears that already surrounded one of the original members of the first Overwatch.

Reinhardt was openly sobbing as he embraced Ana in bearish hug, and even Jack’s eyes looked suspiciously wet from where he now stood off to the side, allowing his fellow squadmates their opportunities to come forward and greet the old colleague that all of them had long since thought dead.

The room spun dizzyingly for a long a moment, and Angela’s memories took her back to a different time. It was one where she had tried to save a teammate from death with a too-young technology, and after again presuming him dead, had first heard news of a very different outcome.

She had to reach out with one hand to steady herself in the present, the surge of emotion temporarily overcoming her. Angela hadn’t been on the mission itself, but the evidence had seemed so clear following the KIA reports for one Ana Amari. The master sniper herself, sniped by a new expert from Talon. They had looked for her body—how Overwatch had scoured the area for anything to put into a casket for the Amari family—and they had checked the hospitals, too. How could they have missed her? Were they so distracted at the time by the new revelation of the ‘Widowmaker’? Or had they simply failed to—

“Angela Ziegler! Jack told me you were still the same as ever, researching every last concoction to save the world. You’ve barely aged a day in ten years by my sight!”

Angela was returning the fierce hug she had been engulfed in without a second thought, eyes suddenly and unexpectedly prickling even after Ana had been pulled away by someone else

It _was_ Ana. Indisputably so.

No matter what toll the lost years when she had been ‘dead’ had taken on her.

If Angela had ‘barely aged’ in a decade, she could not say the same for their old sniper. Time—much like with both Jack and Reinhardt—seemed to have finally and firmly exacted its price Ana Amari.

Gone was the stubbornly jet black hair, flowing out from underneath her military cap; gone was the tall and straight-backed stance that _Captain_ Amari would practically parade around in, as if daring the world to take her on.

Her hair was now a shocking white, a thick braid of it just peeking out from underneath the simple and unassuming hijab that she now wore. Her back and shoulders were hunched in from the lifetime spent sniping and crouching over a scope, lending to the image of her age more than ever. Of course, there was still the spark of the same old Ana glittering in her eyes.

Well... _eye_.

The most pronounced of all the changes was in the patch now firmly in place over Ana’s right eye. Angela could see the hints of scar tissue still creeping around the edges of the hard plastic that betrayed the loss of the organ that was supposed to be beneath it. Was that the wound that had ‘killed’ her then? That had robbed her of her sniper’s eye while simultaneously being lucky enough to avoid piercing the brain behind it.

The sheer odds of it…

Again, Angela had to shake herself slightly to bring her mind firmly back into the present, lest it begin drowning in the past. There was time enough to hear Ana’s story, time enough to think on it later. Now was the moment to simply revel in the fact that Ana was here and alive...that she had returned to the living.

Angela turned her face to dab at her eyes a second time, and then stopped.

For all that she was not a small woman, that it was _her_ mother now returned from the dead to them, Fareeha made a surprisingly small figure to pass over just by the doors, as far as possible from where her mother was still being engulfed in hugs.

Concern washed over Angela.

Was Fareeha in shock? It was stunning enough for Angela and the rest of them to have Ana return in this fashion. She could only begin to imagine for Fareeha…

Angela had just begun to take a step and then stopped, reevaluating what she saw expressed on Fareeha’s face, in her silent body language. Tight, tense. Eyes that weren’t widened from surprise, but narrowed and sharp. Defensive.

Realization dawned on Angela, and she turned back toward Ana. Had...had Fareeha _known_ Ana was alive this entire time?

Angela looked toward Fareeha again, but she was gone, only the faint movement of the door swinging back closed the evidence of where she had gone. She hadn’t even stayed long enough to say anything. And as for Ana…

She was still surrounded by an only increasing crowd. She had not called out Fareeha’s sudden departure, but nor had she made any apparent efforts to go after her daughter.

What…?

It only took a moment’s hesitation from Angela, and then she turned heel and left, exiting out the same double doors and down the hallway, trying to determine just where Fareeha had marched off to. In the half year that they had been dating, Angela had gotten to known just all of the various nooks and hiding places Fareeha liked to take refuge in when she needed space or room to think, just as Fareeha no doubt knew all of Angela’s.

The heavy weight lifting room in the gym was one such place, but Angela frowned, her gut unerringly telling her that the hallway that led there was not the path to take. Perhaps…

Angela went out the inconspicuous side exit door that led outside to one of the loading docks where, sure enough, Fareeha was sitting on the edge of the concrete dock, looking out at the same, boring landscape of grass and trees that surrounded the Overwatch complex.

She was still, statuesque almost, but for the way her hands slowly curled in and out of fists at her sides.

Angela paused for a moment, and then slowly approached, waiting when Fareeha did not immediately say anything. No start of conversation...but no pushing away either. She took a risk, sitting down right beside Fareeha.

“You knew.” Angela didn’t want to sound accusatory. More than anything she was just curious. Ten years of the rest of the world believing Ana was dead, and yet Fareeha seemed to have known it was otherwise the rest of the time.

Her lack of an immediate response confirmed it all before she said anything.

“I knew.”

Quiet. Carefully devoid of any emotion.

Angela knew she needed to tread cautiously here. Everyone in Overwatch had long since learned it was better not to talk about Ana Amari with her surviving daughter, and Angela had always been one to respect that. She was walking on proverbial eggshells by prodding.

“When did you find out?”

There was no immediate response, and Fareeha was still beside her, except for the fidgeting of her fingers as she wrung her hands together in her lap.

“Not until after the funeral. You know, the one with the empty casket. That probably should have been the clue then.”

Fareeha’s voice was unusually sardonic. Angela followed her gaze out toward the spattering of rain that had begun. She remembered that event as clear as day. The empty casket, the ceremony outside of Geneva. Angela had been caught up in her grief, but she could still clearly see in her mind’s eye the freshly minted Corporeal Fareeha Amari—no tears, neither pain nor sorrow on her closed face.

At the time, she had simply assumed it was shock. Different people handled loss different ways. Angela had given her condolences as expected, and that had been the last of any Amari that Angela had expected to see for the rest of her life until the recall had been issued and Fareeha had stepped in to offer her services.

“I remember when I got the news.” Angela’s attention was jerked back to the present. “I was at one of the bases near the Red Sea, in the middle of a training drill, when I got called into the main offices to speak with the commander. You know it’s never a good thing when they pull you out mid-drill. Gave me the communication directly from Overwatch. Botched mission. Ana Amari KIA. Even though they didn’t have a body. Immediate permission for leave of absence.”

Fareeha stopped to take a deep breath. So much that wasn’t said in that single breath.

“And then five months later I get the letter. No address, not even the faintest hint about where it might have come from. Alive all this time, but choosing to remain dead. Choosing to remain away, to be ghost…” Angela did not miss how Fareeha’s knuckles had turned white from the force of fists she how made. “...like she always knew what was best—”

The sound of the door opening up behind them cut off whatever Fareeha was going to say.

“Well, what does a mother have to do to get a welcome from her daughter around here?”

Ana’s voice was light and joking, at jarring odds with the serious discussion she had stepped into.

“Come now, _habibti_ , where’s my hug?” Ana opened her arms, but though Fareeha had stood, she was unmoving.

The small hairs on the back of Angela’s neck stood on end from the tension present in the air, discomfort only increasing when Fareeha said nothing back.

“I’m just...going to go back to my lab.” Whatever was to happen here, no matter her own curiosity, was between mother and daughter, and she felt guilty for stepping in on it—never mind that it had been Ana who had interrupted the original privacy between Angela and Fareeha. No one seemed to take notice as of Angela as she made her leave toward the door back inside.

She dared to glance back only just before the door fully closed behind her: Ana had switched to Arabic, obviously chiding her daughter as she stepped forward and took her hug.

Fareeha’s arms had remained at her sides the entire time, hands still white-knuckled and clenched into fists.

* * *

_Why?_

It was a question that had haunted Fareeha for the many years prior whenever she thought of her mother, and the specter of it had risen a second time now, if for different reasons.

The answers were no more clear or forthcoming than in all the years prior, and the well of emotions it drew up in Fareeha were just as muddied and gross as before. They swirled beneath her sternum and her temple like a physical ache, and all too often now Fareeha found her jaw hurting from the force with which she clenched her teeth during the day.

She should be happy, she reasoned. Everyone else was happy. Any good daughter would be happy.

Fareeha was anything but enthused.

She felt more out of place than even when she had first received the invitation to join Overwatch over a year ago, and it was mentally jarring.

This was still her home, she rationalized to herself. Nothing had changed but for another person to be added. Nothing had changed but her perception. Everything would feel normal again soon enough.

She repeated the mantra to herself as gathered a plate full of food in the cafeteria, stomach growling for lunch.

“Oi! Captain Amari!”

Fareeha turned, a smile already growing on her face as she prepared a response back for Lena—

Until she saw Lena wasn’t even facing her, was instead waving toward—

It was as though cold water had been poured on her insides, and abruptly all of her stomach’s prior interest in lunch evaporated. She didn’t feel like eating anymore, especially as she vaguely heard Lena and her mother now get into an animated talk. Maybe if she could just set her tray back down and head out…

“Fareeha! _Habibti_...come join us for lunch!”

She winced for a moment, but only her sandwich bore witness to it. By the time Fareeha turned a second time to wave back, even a drill sergeant would have been proud of how her face showed nothing.

The vague thought of basic training camp triggered a dull ache in her chest...something that felt more and more like homesickness. The room swirled sickly around her as Fareeha did exactly as her mother asked and walked obediently toward the table. She ate mechanically, responded only when needed, and left as soon as she could make excuses for work that needed to be attended to.

She quickly began to adapt her schedule to avoid taking meals at normal times when everyone else—and her mother—were more likely to be present. It was just easier that way.

In the end, it was Satya of all people who seemed the most perceptive.

She dropped by the med bay one afternoon for a routine check up on the connection with her prosthetic arm. Angela was just finishing up the diagnostics in an easy and companionable silence when Satya unexpectedly tested the waters.

“Captain Fareeha Amari...how is she fairing?”

The question caught Angela off guard; Satya was the last person on the base to make room for small talk, which meant that it was hardly a casual sort of question as if fielded from someone else

Angela realized she had stopped her work, and then continued, trying to keep her voice light. “And what makes you ask that?”

She waited patiently for a response, knowing Satya wasn’t one to be rushed.

“She seems...most distressed. Though I believe she is trying not to show it.” Satya paused for a moment, the same uncertainty as before flickering across her face—as if concerned she was overstepping a social boundary that she was otherwise unaware of. “You, too, seem similarly distressed, Dr. Ziegler.”

“Angela,” she corrected automatically. Then she answered. As much as her nature dictated she shield her own reactions from those around her, she recognized the importance of being forthright with Satya. “And you are correct. I am distressed. Just...at a bit of a loss as to what to do. I want to be able to help Fareeha, but I am...not certain how I can help in this regard.”

The worst discomfort eased away from Satya, and she nodded, turning her gaze back down to her prosthetic arm. “It seems as though it is a very difficult situation for Fareeha, considering the many similarities in careers and professional success between her and her mother, and the legacy that her mother has both left her and now returned to.”

Which was the most polite way to say that there were serious and deeply complicated issues between mother and daughter, which Angela or any of them were not the best equipped to get in the middle of.

Angela sighed deeply. “You are quite right, I’m afraid.”

Satya paused for a longer moment then, staring at Angela and clearly struggling to find the right words with which to frame her thoughts. “Dr. Ziegler, I do not mean to presume too much in saying this, but while you seem accustomed to being able to ‘cure’ most problems for people, your inability to fix things for Fareeha is not a failing on your part. I believe it means more than what Fareeha would admit to that you are there for her.”

“Just Angela is fine.” She corrected Satya again, but then blinked, nodding slowly. Satya was right, after all. Angela couldn’t just magically fix things for Fareeha, no matter how much she wished she could. But maybe just being there for her, being her support, was enough.

Angela nodded to herself.

For now, it would have to be.

* * *

“Fareeha, if your intent is to pace for the entire afternoon, may I suggest the hallway instead of the length of the medical bay?”

At Angela’s dry yet still admonishing tone, Fareeha stopped short, properly abashed. This was Angela’s work area, after all, and yet Fareeha was using it as more of a hiding hole.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, sitting down onto the edge of one of the pristine, white beds. Forced to stillness, she noticed how much her body wanted to twitch and move instead, though she wasn’t about to give in.

Instead she made herself watch Angela, watch the way she unloaded from vacuum whatever sample she had been looking at in the massive benchtop microscope. She watched as the sample stub was carefully loaded back into a box, meticulously labeled with some sort of letter and number system that no doubt kept everything perfectly organized for reference. Because that was how Angela ran her lab.

She watched as the nitrile gloves were carefully removed and then placed into the trash, as experimental notes were then precisely typed up on the computer. Always so organized, so productive. For Doctor Angela Ziegler, it really did seem as though her work never ended. In an odd way, Fareeha was almost envious of her...of the way that her research remained constant throughout everything, and how easily Angela could just slide her mind and thoughts back toward accomplishing whatever experiment or procedure needed to be done.

‘Work’ for Fareeha only provided so much relief. There were only so many hours to be spent at the shooting range, only so many times she could go to Morrison and ask for another assignment or mission before even the head of Overwatch himself grew exasperated and shooed her away to ‘take some down time while things were actually still quiet’.

She didn’t want quiet right now. She wanted to stay busy so that her mother could stop trying to corner her into one-on-one time and so that she could collapse into her mattress at the end of the night and just pass out from exhaustion.

Basic training seemed practically like a luxury now. Drill sergeants who would run you into the ground...make sure there was never a waking moment you spent idle. No time for distractions or stress. And no worrying about mothers who might jump out from around any corner...

“You know, Fareeha, if you’d rather be somewhere else more productive for you like the shooting range or the gym, I’d hardly mind. I’m doing my own work, too.”

Fareeha started, caught off guard. Was she being a disturbance by staying here? But no, she had spent hours lounging in the med bay before as Angela had worked, and it had never once been a problem. Perhaps she was leaking out more of her nerves than even she realized?

“If you have work to focus on, I can go. I just…” When she paused for a moment, Angela looked up, and then Fareeha continued. “I just wanted to spend some time with you.”

Contrary to the usual response of a warm smile that Fareeha expected from such a confession, Angela sighed, rubbing her fingers against one temple.

“Is something wrong?” Had she missed hearing about some critical deadline? The last thing Fareeha wanted was to be in the way.

Angela put her glasses down before answering, looking frank.

“You’ve just been rather busy with travel for missions lately, and even now that you’re back, I feel like I hardly get a chance to see you _outside_ of work. We haven’t had a real night in together since before you left for the mission to Lijiang, and that was three assignments ago. I want to spend time with you, too, but if I have to pick and choose just what time, I’d rather it be time where you can actually have my full attention...and I can have yours.”

Angela’s voice was carefully neutral, devoid of the feelings that Fareeha knew must be stirring beneath the surface. It made her wince. She had been so preoccupied with her mother that she’d been having trouble thinking beyond that...thinking about how since Ana had returned, she’d gone from sleeping in the same bed with Angela every night, to now the same cautious and occasional rendezvous as when they had been first, secretly starting to date. And Angela had not complained once about it, had let Fareeha do as she needed that entire time, even if Fareeha hadn’t stopped until now to think of the toll it must be taking.

In a rare burst of potentially public affection, Fareeha stepped forward and quickly wrapped her arms around her girlfriend, pulling Angela flush against her. Sometimes the good doctor really was too good for her.

“I’m sorry,” Fareeha apologized into the soft tangle of blonde hair. She could feel Angela relax into her. That was encouraging. “I haven’t been thinking right lately, and I’m sorry if you’ve gotten the wrong idea from it. I promise I’m _not_ ashamed of you or of us. There’s no one I could even begin to imagine being with besides you. Having _omi_ suddenly around again, and like this…it is just...”

Already her shoulders were tensed, her jaw gritted. She hated how Ana had this effect on her, even now, and Fareeha had take a long and slow breath and exhale through her nose to remind herself of the present and what this was about.

Angela was already reaching up to cup Fareeha’s cheek in one hand. Her bright, blue eyes were filled with emotion. “I understand needing your space, _chäferli_ , truly I do. Just remember I am here for you, too...and I want to be here for you however you need.”

She stood on tiptoes to kiss Fareeha, warm and reassuring.

“All I ask is that you let me know when you need that space. You don’t need to explain to me why.”

Then she turned back toward her work, and Fareeha was still caught with the words stuck in her throat, her desire to speak at odds with the tension that wracked her body.

 _But I do_.

* * *

It wasn’t until that night, cuddled up in Angela’s bed, that she found herself able to speak of it. Angela was humming some wordless tune into her neck, interrupted now and then when she stopped to press the occasional kiss to bare skin.

God, but if she hadn’t realized how much Angela had needed a night of physical intimacy, Fareeha had been completely unaware of how she needed it herself just as much. Perhaps even more.

The worst of the tension that seemed to constantly lock up her muscles over the past few weeks had blessedly eased as Angela’s slender fingers—even now—languidly ran over her. Fareeha let her eyes close, enjoying the rare touch that only Angela was allowed. As per usual, her fingers unerringly found Fareeha’s dog tags—the one adornment that she always wore, even when everything else had been stripped away from her skin. They jingled faintly before Angela continued moving onward, fingertips drawing nameless circles down her sternum and toward her belly.

Normally it was something to make her smile to herself, how Angela seemed so unaware of her fixation of playing with the tags. But tonight it made her brow furrow instead, drawing her thoughts back to everything that had been weighing on them so heavily as of late.

She forced the first words past her lips before her pride could choke them back down.

“My...mother never approved of me wanting to join the military.”

For one horrible, self-conscious moment, the patterns being drawn against her skin stopped, and Fareeha felt her chest muscles seize up, refusing to draw breath.

Then Angela’s fingers were moving again, perhaps a tad slower, perhaps even more meandering than before. Fareeha swallowed, suddenly and terribly grateful that Angela had not raised herself up on her elbows, that she remained safely tucked against Fareeha’s side.

Something like ‘oh?’ was murmured into her neck, questioning, but not demanding. An open invitation, and Fareeha swallowed. She felt lips kiss her collarbone, and the rising tension in her shoulders at least stopped, even if it didn’t dissipate.

“I...I wasn’t the best in primary school. Not like how she wanted me to be anyway. I didn’t want to grow up and be an astronaut or an engineer or a doctor. Sorry,” Fareeha paused to offer the sheepish apology, and felt Angela’s lips curl into a small smile against her.

“...not everyone’s calling, darling. Even I can appreciate that.”

After a moment, Fareeha continued, eyes now open and boring into the ceiling above them. “The Amari family has always had soldiers, as far back as I know of. And growing up surrounded by Overwatch…”

She shook her head the slightest bit. She didn’t want to talk about that old hero worship, especially now that she actually worked with some of the very people she used to idolize as a kid.

“I never thought much about it, until mom found out I was talking with a military recruiter for the Egyptian Army. We fought.”

Which was an understatement. It was the only time Ana Amari had raised a hand against her ‘foolish, selfish daughter’, and the words had stung and stuck with Fareeha just as much as the slap to her cheek. Even more.

“She didn’t want me going into the army, throwing away ‘everything she had built for me’.”

Fareeha could feel Angela’s lips now curl downward into a frown instead, could sense the curiosity, and so she appreciated more than ever that Angela didn’t interrupt or ask, but simply hummed quiet encouragement for her to continue, drawing those same, relaxing circles into Fareeha’s skin and muscles.

“We just...stopped talking really, once I went straight into the army instead of to uni. They send the normal reports home. I made the perfunctory calls. I graduated top of my recruitment class and got recommended for officer school immediately...just as was expected of the famed Ana Amari’s daughter, even if she was too busy with Overwatch to attend her daughter’s graduation, or officer graduation, or any of the promotions. After all, surely she was expecting these results from her daughter. Just following in her steps”

The bitterness that slipped out almost surprised even her. Almost. Just because Fareeha had never let herself speak of it didn’t mean she wasn’t self-aware of it. She took a deep breath, and then exhaled it out.

“And then you know what happened next. She ‘died’. We were barely on speaking terms, I hadn’t even seen her in person in nearly a year, and she died. Except she didn’t. She went into hiding, leaving me only a cryptic handwritten note going on again about how she never wanted me to follow her path, how she would continue to watch over from the shadows and…”

The tension in her body surged, enough to choke off her words, and it took a solid minute of Angela’s patient silence before Fareeha could manage again, tight with years of bound up anger.

“And then Overwatch fell. And suddenly I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life anymore. I didn’t want to be ‘Ana Amari’s daughter’ for the rest of it. So when the offer from Helix International came, I took it. It felt like a chance to be me.”

The quiet of the room was broken only by the sound of their breathing, until Angela dared to speak softly.

“And when Winston recalled the organization, when the offer _did_ come from Overwatch…?”

History spoke for itself, but a for a moment, Fareeha relived it. The debate of an old childhood dream against a desire to break out from a mold she feared she was trapped in.

“I still wanted it. And since mom was ‘gone’...”

Her words really were done now, her vocal chords finally refusing to cooperate with the rare and unexpected moment of vulnerability she had managed to exploit.

“And now she’s come back,” finished Angela for her, doubtlessly filling in her own blanks.

“Now _Captain_ Amari is really back, yes.”

Fareeha’s response was richly sarcastic, and she suddenly feared how much of her own private hurt she had revealed. A surge of panic ran through her when Angela did lift her head up. She instinctively tried to turn away but Angela’s gaze wouldn’t let her.

“ _Fareeha_. I for one am certain that Captain Amari is right where she’s meant to be, and that I am lucky enough for her to also conveniently be right next to me at this very moment.”

It was absurdly saccharine to say, and yet the worst of the tension suddenly bled out from Fareeha, and she pulled Angela down to her, content with kissing.

“Thank you for trusting in me to share, _mein chäferli_. You know you have all of my love and support, whatever you need.”

And that was worth more to her than anything or anyone else in the world.

* * *

It was bound to happen.

Now that Fareeha had decided to stop running from headquarters on every last mission available, it had meant the inevitable task of having to work alongside her mother, having to handle her in both professional and personal settings, and with not enough of a barrier between to two. They were practicing an ambush scenario in the big training dome. It was Fareeha and Zarya holding a vanguard position, with Ana, Mei, and Genji coming up from the rearguard. And the simulations had been rocky so far.

“You can’t take that angle in the air or you’ll leave the flank open on the left!”

Ana complained loudly through the comm system, stepping out from her ‘sniper nest’ to berate Fareeha for the fifth time in a row. Why was it that it felt like only Fareeha was ever getting called out? She gritted her teeth and tried to give a calm response back, but felt her blood pressure spike.

“This is the best angle for me in this approach! From here I can launch a rocket barrage that would strike the majority of their force, and Zarya can handle the flank if Mei comes up to support.”

Ana made a sound of exasperated derision. “Majority isn’t all of them! _Habibti_ , this isn’t some game—”

Fareeha snarled, all of her worn patience coming unraveled.

“I’m not a bloody child at this!”

The words echoed through the air, and everything went eerily silent. Fareeha’s heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears when her mother turned up to face her, eye sharp with disbelief at the tone Fareeha had taken.

“Fareeha Amari, now you come here and listen to me, you foolish, wooly-headed—”

Fareeha snapped, and her feet slammed into the ground before she’d even realized she controlled her raptora suit to land. She was done. Done with treating her mother like some sort of untouchable superior, done with tiptoeing around her, done with being treated like the secondary Amari in the base and in life, least of all from her mother.

“No, _you_ listen! For once in your life shut your mouth and listen! I’m former Helix Captain Fareeha Amari, graduated first in her class from military academy, recommended directly for officer promotion, served in the front lines at the Gibraltar campaign, before honorable discharge and being nominated to lead the newly formed Helix Corp Raptora air support unit. I was personally invited to join the newly reformed Overwatch at age thirty-two not because my last name was Amari and my mother was supposedly dead, but because everything I earned to my name I clawed and fought tooth and nail to earn so that no one could accuse me of hanging on the laurels of my mother’s accomplishments.” She sucked in a deep breath, red pulsing at the edge of her vision and her hands trembling with a sort of fearful exhilaration. “I came here because of what _I_ wanted to do, because my mother sure as hell never supported anything about my choice of career. I am a world expert in what I do, and _no one_ here, least of all an squadmate who isn’t even my superior officer, is allowed to presume that they dare know better than me about what I do and how to do it. Do not. Treat me. Like I am some child for you to casually discipline in front of my peers.”

Her blood roared in her ears now. Never had she ever spoken to her mother like this before, not even when she was a teenager and they had yelled at each other when Ana had found the army recruitment flyers in Fareeha’s school bag.

This was different, and Fareeha had crossed a line she had never dared to even toe before.

No one said anything, not even Ana, and the entire training exercise was forgotten as all eyes were focused on the altercation between mother and daughter. Fareeha gritted her teeth. Damn it all. Let her get disciplined later if it was an issue. She was well and truly done with this.

“Now if that’s all, _Captain Amari_ , I’ll be taking my leave.”

She noted with a sort of vicious satisfaction the way that her mother’s one good eye widened at the formal title before flinching from her daughter in shock. Fareeha straightened, the momentary victory already souring in her mouth to the taste of iron. Training held through, though. Back perfectly straight, she flashed a textbook crisp salute.

“Ma’am.”

Then she turned heel and left, refusing to look back even once as she stormed down the hall. Her ears roared so loudly she wouldn’t have been able to tell if anyone was calling after her anyway.

It was over.

* * *

Angela knew her reputation just as well as everyone else in Overwatch did: when the doctor was focused in on her work, she became very, very focused. Even so, what with the security camera feed and the automatic doors that led into the med bay, it really was a rarity for anyone’s entrance to go unnoticed by her.

So when she was busy running through the latest simulations of some new data, if the sudden and unexpected voice voice next to ear hadn’t make her jump, the words that were uttered certainly would have.

“So just how long have you been sleeping with my daughter, hm?”

 _This is how I die_.

That was the only primal thought to flash with red sirens inside Angela’s mind, with a brief follow up of:

_Ah, I hope Fareeha will remember me fondly, even if they never do find my body._

“I...I…” What was she even supposed say back? Pinned into her own chair, Ana staring down at her...any possible attempt at coherence fled from Angela, and she gripped onto her armrests until her fingers ached from the force of it.

And then Ana’s lips twisted upward. A grin, though still far from reassuring, as if laughing at something Angela was not part of.

“Don’t go and faint on me now— _you’re_ the doctor here.”

Okay, so she wasn’t going die just yet, but when Ana pulled up another chair and plopped herself down a bare arm’s reach away, Angela knew she was hardly going to escape. Adrenaline thrummed through her blood, the fight or flight instinct that was still screaming at her to fly. She was in her lab coat, though, not her Valkyrie suit, so she was forced to wait, trying and failing to calm her rapid heart rate as Ana gazed unblinkingly at her, momentary grin now fading away into something more serious and pensive.

“I have to admit, I never expected _you_ of all people.”

Angela instinctively bristled at the words themselves and the once-over that Ana gave her. The tone itself hadn’t been explicitly disapproving, but Angela was wary nonetheless. Since when had Ana ever been approving of anything with her?

“How did you know?” She doubted Fareeha had said anything considering the state of affairs between mother and daughter, or the lack thereof. Angela wasn’t one to pry, and Fareeha had hardly said much...but everyone knew what had happened, even if no one dared to bring it up.

“Bah! I’m not blind you know. I see the way she looks at you and the way you look at her.”

Ana’s hand darted out, and Angela suddenly found her jaw being grasped in a surprisingly iron grip. Her indignity flared, but as she opened her mouth to snap something, Ana continued, her one good eye sharp and yet soft as it seemed to look both at and through Angela.

“...like you’re the light in her universe, and like she’s the only thing you care about in this world.” Then she released her grip, pulling up a chair to sit in. “Put your hackles down, Angela. If I had a problem, you’d _know_. I’m just...surprised is all.”

Angela was caught between shifting uncomfortably and still holding onto a simmer of anger. She’d forgotten Ana’s brusque and practically diminutive manner in all the years that she’d been...well, ‘dead’. It had been something that had gnawed at the much younger and more inexperienced Angela in those old days—butting heads with someone who was her superior and constantly feeling talked down to by the older woman.

She decided to settle with a curt: “It’s hardly like it was anything _planned_ for.”

Ana lips twisted into something of a bittersweet smile. Ah, but she would understand that wouldn’t she?

“When is it ever planned for, doctor? Thought you’d be married to your work for the rest of your life at your rate...and I suppose a mother never sees her little girl growing up either.”

Ana’s gaze grew distant for a moment. Was she reminiscing on times long since past?

Angela finally grew impatient, but kept her voice polite. “What are you here for, Ana?”

No matter how the conversation had started, Angela had the nagging feeling that Ana had hardly interrupted her just to discuss the seeming improbability of her dating Fareeha. For her part, Ana pursed her lips, the wrinkles born of age and weariness stretching into dark lines across her face.

“I...I need you to do something for me.”

A favor? What could she possibly do for the famed Ana Amari?

“Something medical? I assure you, Ana, my facilities are always open for you. You hardly need to ask a favor—”

Ana waved her hand and made a noise, dismissing the idea. “No, I…” She paused again, and Angela realized Ana’s uncharacteristic hesitance came from discomfort. “I need you to say something to Fareeha for me.”

Whatever Angela had been expecting, it was _not_ that.

Angela paused before speaking, somewhat confused, and now also wary. She needed to be careful and measured with her words regarding such a loaded topic—for both Amaris, apparently. “Last I checked, I’m not Fareeha, Ana. If you need to tell her something, I recommend speaking directly with her.”

Ana’s lips grew thin at that, and Angela braced herself for a reprimand. Yet, when Ana spoke, it was hardly that.

“I...she’s not interested in talking with me.”

 _Like that’s stopped you before_. Angela bit down on the inside of cheek. Sarcasm was flattering on no one, even if it was highly tempting in the moment.

“At all,” clarified Ana, before Angela could speak. “She’s made her stance very...clear. And she’s not responding to any attempts I make to talk with her or message her.”

“So...you are asking me to be your messenger?”

Ana nodded, continuing. “She’ll listen to you. I need you to tell her exactly—”

“ _No_.” Not once had Angela ever dared to so boldly cut off Ana Amari to her face.

It did not bode well.

Immediately, Ana’s face darkened, unused to such treatment. “Now just listen for a moment, Ziegler—”

Angela’s anger, an uncommon thing to ever show face, suddenly began to burn in her chest. She would not be talked over. Not this time.

“No, _you listen_ , Ana! Look at yourself! Even now, you’re treating her like she’s an unruly child. She’s not a child anymore. She’s an adult, one who’s entitled to make her own decisions and her own life—a life that _you’ve_ chosen to remain absent from for the last decade!”

Ana’s eye flashed, and she held herself taller somehow, dangerous for all that she was not armed.

“Everything I have ever done has been for her! Every life I’ve taken, every shot I’ve counted, every day I’ve spent in the last ten years as a ghost instead of—”

Oh and Angela didn’t doubt any of that, but her own protective anger for Fareeha’s sake flared into life, rare but ferocious. She stood up herself, suddenly not the least bit intimidated by cutting off the legendary Ana Amari.

“How many birthdays?”

“I...what?” Ana pursed her lips, eyebrows drawn down in obvious confusion.

Angela repeated herself. “I said, how many birthdays? How many holiday celebrations? How many dinners did you miss? How many graduation and promotion ceremonies? Where were you when she came back from leading her first successful mission? When she received her first medal? Her first military recommendation? Where were you when she decided to leave her squad for Helix International? Where were you when she got the invitation to join Overwatch? Where were you?”

“I—”

For once, Angela pressed relentlessly, her voice taking on a sharp, unforgiving edge. “Do you even know _why_ she chose that? Do you know why she chose the military at all? What her driving motivation is? What,” Angela paused to tap just below her own eye. “That mark—of protection, of purpose—means to her? Why—despite the fact that you never once approved of anything she’s committed herself toward—she’s chosen this path and this life nonetheless? When in the last decade while you’ve been ‘dead’ did you ever think of the answers to any of these questions?”

Even Angela had taken herself aback with the quiet but intense ferocity of her own outburst. Her heart thudded in her ears; elevated blood pressure and heart rate, all evidence of an adrenal-spiked response in her body.

Silence now hung between them, growing heavier and more awkward by the second, until Angela began to fidget and opened her mouth to try to—

Ana chuckled, a lower rasp than in the old days, but that same familiar cadence that indicated true amusement. Angela snapped her mouth closed, whatever she might have said dying on her tongue as Ana spoke.

“I see you’ve finally grown yourself a backbone while I was gone, girl.”

Angela felt something in her sing at the unexpected praise—Ana never gave out praise easily, and it was only ever genuine—but she still forced a glare to face, and a bite to words.

“I’m not a girl anymore, Ana. I’m thirty-seven and have four different degrees to my name.”

Which amounted to nine too many letters to add after her name on her official files.

This, predictably, didn’t phase Ana even the slightest. Instead, she stood, some of her joints popping as she stretched.

“Still a girl compared to me. Always will be.” Leave it to Ana to always tie a compliment right back to an insult. Yet before Angela could speak again, Ana fixed her gaze with her still good, fierce eye. “But a girl’s grown smart, even an old woman like me can see that. Maybe smarter in some things than an old woman would like to readily admit.”

A loud sigh left Ana’s lips, and then she yawned as if bored. Clearly Ana was done with this talk of sorts, though she paused one last time before stepping away.

“Angela...I...I am glad Fareeha has you there for her.”

 _No more than Fareeha is there for me_.

Angela blinked, and by the time she had collected her thoughts around the unexpected concession, Ana was nearly at the door.

“Ana, wait!”

Angela wasn’t even sure what had possessed her to call out, particularly when Ana did indeed stop and turn back. There were a million and one other things Angela still had reason to call attention to with Ana--not the least of which was the rather _highly questionable_ use of Angela’s own earlier nanobooster and nanoregenerative medicines attached to Ana’s sniper rifle, something that Angela had firmly set her foot against when the idea had first been raised in the original Overwatch.

What came out of her mouth was something entirely different, though, making Angela surprise herself for the second time that day.

“Ana, your eye…” Angela continued after a moment, indicating not the eye that remained, but the lack of one that was now covered by a patch. The original organ there had even had cybernetic enhancements, which would make putting in a full prosthetic that much easier for her body to adjust to. “We could repair it, give you back your sniper’s eye. There are a variety of different procedures and technologies now.”

Ana shook her head, but smiled. “You are kind, Angela, but I won’t be in need of anything like that. I’ve learned to live with it...and I like to think of it as a good reminder. Thank you again.”

She had a feeling it wasn’t the medical offer that Ana was thanking her for.

* * *

It was a quiet evening in. A rare one...ironically rare not for being quiet, but for being one of the few nights spent in with Angela.

Fareeha had been trying her best to fix that, though. Put the past and her mother alike behind her, and not take for granted what life had given her in the moment.

Which in the moment was Angela.

Even though they were doing nothing more risque than staying cuddled up against one another in bed, nightclothes still on, reading books.

Well, Angela was reading a book. Fareeha was supposed to have been reading a book, too, but she wasn’t quite sure when she had set it down in favor of gazing out the window into the starry night.

It had been over a week since her blow up with her mother, and she still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it.

Angela had been understanding, but then, when wasn’t she understanding? It felt as though practically everything had gone to hell since Ana had showed up again, and for a bitter moment Fareeha couldn’t deny that part of wished for the more straightforward life when her mother had still been ‘dead’.

Thinking about that just soured her mood all over again.

Fareeha felt badly, but also hated that she felt badly. She knew that even if said in a moment of anger, she had said things that _needed_ to be said, so why did she still feel off about everything? It didn’t help that Ana had been trying to contact her still, even though Fareeha had refused to respond to anything. The messages had stopped for a fews days, but when she had checked her email before bed, there had been a new one.

All it had had said was in the title of the message: ‘I’m sorry. Please let me try again.’

Yet on the heels of her own guilt, the now familiar outrage followed, furious and burning. Let her _try_? Let her try what? Hadn’t Fareeha been trying for how many years while Ana was the one running wild?

“Do you want to talk or do you just want space?”

Angela’s gentle and infinitely understanding question interrupted her ruminations. Angela had set aside her book and her glasses onto the night table, a sign that she was offering her full and undivided attention, if it was desired. The trouble was, Fareeha was as uncertain as ever as to what she wanted herself.

“I just...I don’t know!” she finally admitted, letting some of her own frustration bleed into her voice. “Everything is just...off. Everything has been off ever since she returned! Even though I tried to just end it between us and go on with normal life. I just want things to feel normal again, not so...so stilted.”

And that was it exactly. She had tried to regain some measure of control, so why didn’t it feel like it?

Angela gave her a quick kiss on the lips after the outburst, meant to be nothing more than quietly comforting. “Do you want my input? Or just an ear to vent to?”

Fareeha swallowed, thinking hard for a long moment before nodding. “I’d like your opinion. I feel like I don’t know what to do. She keeps...keeps asking if I’ll start things over with her. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what that means.”

“Mm,” Angela hummed, a fluid, oddly lulling sound that she always made when concentrating.

Slowly, Fareeha relaxed her shoulders, listening to what Angela had to say.

“I can’t speak for either you or for Ana—the relationship between the two of you and all of its intricacies starts from the day you were born and came into her life. I’m not going to excuse the choices she’s made or how she’s treated you, even if she has her own good intentions behind them. Intent doesn’t change outcome.” Angela took a deep breath. “However, family is still family, and I do honestly believe she wants to make better on the wrongs she has done by you. Even if it has taken her more than a decade to realize that…”

Angela shook her head for a moment, then continued.

“I won’t say anything more on it, Fareeha, because I truly don’t mean to meddle. What is between you and your mother is just that: between the two of you. What you choose is your choice, and you can only do right by you. But…”

Fareeha heard Angela draw a breath, and there was no mistaking the wistful and faraway sadness in her voice when she continued.

“Remember that the gift of family is just that, a gift. And it is one that many do not even get the choice in whether they wish to have it or not.”

A different sort of guilt washed over Fareeha abruptly, though she knew that had not been Angela’s intent at all. How could she have been so selfish in dealing with her own mother to forget that Angela had no parents of her own to even dream of dealing with? To forget just how for the majority of her own life, Angela had never experienced the luxury of ‘family’.

“I…”

“Shh…” Angela hushed her before she could speak and pressed a kiss to her forehead, silencing whatever Fareeha might have spoken. “I’ll say no more on the matter, Fareeha. I just want you to be happy, and it hurts me to see you so clearly unhappy like this.”

Fareeha received another, equally chaste kiss on her lips, and then Angela reached back over toward the night table to turn off the lamp.

“Get rest, _liebling_. Tomorrow is another day.”

Angela fell asleep with ease, but Fareeha lay next to her for some time yet, staring up at the dark shapes of the fan blades as they quietly spun overhead.

* * *

In the end, the ever-present desire to try to make amends won out, and Fareeha cautiously agreed to _try_.

She was surprised more than anything when at the first attempt to meet her, her mother didn’t push her, and then she was suspicious. Ana didn’t bring up how things had last left off between them, or anything of the sort.

Instead she started off by letting Fareeha talk. She asked simple questions, about how Fareeha had enjoyed Helix Corp, about her thoughts on Overwatch, even about her time in the army. Little by little, Fareeha eased up, answering more in depth as her suspicion and wariness gradually eased and as she realized, with a bit of shock, that her mother seemed genuinely, curiously interested in Fareeha herself.

The worst of the awkwardness started to fade when Ana didn’t push any boundaries, when she didn’t press Fareeha to speak any more than whatever Fareeha felt inclined to. And slowly but surely, something akin to cautious normalcy started to be rebuilt between the two of them.

It was a warm spring day, and Ana had suggesting having afternoon tea outside, even going so far as make some traditional snacks and foods that brought back the memories for Fareeha of growing up and lazy afternoons much the same with family like this.

It must have dredged up similar memories with Ana, who broke the easy silence again during their second cup of tea.

“Reminds me of when you were still not even half my height.” Fareeha could hear her mother’s wry grin even though her eyes were closed; now she was easily a foot taller than Ana. “Being able to spend my time with you...I miss those days.”

Fareeha’s eyes shot open at her mother’s admission.

“I missed so many of those days by not being there for you. And I...I didn’t even realize what I was missing until it was too late.”

Ana was looking off into the grassy fields, but her eye was staring into a different time entirely.

“I remember when the doctors first handed you to me to hold in the hospital. You were all red and wrinkly and squirming, but quiet. Not even a squeal from you. Big brown eyes already wide and curious. And I knew in that moment you were worth everything to me. You were worth the world. And I knew then that I would do anything to protect you.” Ana sighed deeply. “Snipers don’t think quite the same as other soldiers. When I took a life from a kilometer away, when I scratched another mark onto the case of my sniper rifle, I reminded myself that it was the price to pay to protect you and the world I was trying to build for you. A world where people like me wouldn’t be necessary. But that didn’t make it any easier. And it made it that much harder for me when I became aware you wanted to follow in my footsteps.”

Fareeha, gaping until this moment, squeaked out the only word she could manage.

“Why?”

Ana turned to look at her finally, and her gaze was both hard and filled with regret.

“Because I didn’t want you to have to kill, to have know the same toll as I do that freedom never comes free. All I ever wanted for you was what I think every parent wants for their child: for your innocence and freedom to last as forever.”

Fareeha gritted her jaw. It was the same thing all over again, the same thing that her mother always ended up falling back on even now. But then Ana tempered it.

“But I forgot all girls must grow up, and I forgot that you always have been and always will be your own person...even if you are always my little Fareeha to _me_.” Ana took a deep breath, her eye dropping for a moment before cautiously looking up again. “I...I am sorry, Fareeha. Everything I did, I always had you in mind...but I see now that it doesn’t change the hurt I caused you. And I see now how selfish I’ve been.”

When she didn’t immediately continue, Fareeha realized she was being silently offered the chance to speak for once, freely and without constraint. She wanted to accept the apology, but the anger boiled up to her lips first, spilling out, bitter and sharp. Unconsciously, Fareeha crossed her arms, fingers digging into her biceps.

“You...it was like you never understood. Like you could never be happy for me. I wasn’t ever going to be the doctor or engineer you wanted. I just...wasn’t ever going to be that, mum. It wasn’t me.”

Suddenly she was seventeen all over again, a fresh bruise aching on her cheek as she pushed her face into her pillow and told herself the burning from her eyes wasn’t from tears.

Ana was quiet when she spoke. “I can’t take back the mistakes I’ve made, Fareeha. And I _have_ made mistakes, ones that I bitterly regret now. I can’t change the things I’ve said and done. I can only change what I do from this day going forward. You are the most precious gift that life has ever given me. More than anything, I _am_ proud of you, Fareeha. I am proud of who you have become. I am proud of the woman you have moulded yourself into, even if I do fear from the darkness you have set yourself to face against. I want you in my life again, if you’ll let me back into yours. I want us to be a family again.”

Ana ended with her arms open, offering but not forcing. The choice was left to Fareeha. It didn’t even take a second thought.

She hugged her mother tightly, some nameless knot in her chest finally, _finally_ , beginning to loosen.

Ana’s face was wet when she pulled back, keeping one hand gripped around Fareeha’s arm.

“How tall you’ve grown! And your instructors at training thought you’d want to be a sniper at first...ha! How little they knew of you…”

“ _Omi…_ ” Really, though. Fareeha was taken aback that her mother remembered that from the old reports that got sent home from basic training all those years ago. Maybe she really had cared in her own way.

Maybe...even mothers were just as human as the rest of them.

They both sat down to their small picnic ahaom, refilling their cups with more tea. This time the silence was comfortable.

“So, my daughter,” Ana suddenly began again, taking a healthy sip from her tea first.

Her voice was very matter of fact, and Fareeha was curious what her mother was going to say next. She tore off a piece of the flatbread and dipped it into the _salatit zabadi_ , chewing on it as her mother swallowed.

“Tell me how your dating life goes.”

Fareeha wheezed, pounding on her chest to clear it, eyes watering until she was able to toss back most of her own tea to wash it down. Whatever she had thought her mother might bring up in conversation next, it was certainly _not_ that subject.

“E-excuse me?”

Ana frowned, completely unaffected by Fareeha’s lack of composure. “Don’t play coy with me, _habibti_. When I was your age, I had no shortage of lovers, military and Overwatch time constraints be damned.”

A misty and faraway smile glossed across Ana’s face as she said it. A stroll down memory lane, no doubt.

No.

_No. Ew!_

This was not happening. Fareeha did _not_ need to hear about her own mother’s sexacapades during her prime. An internal scream wailed up between her ears, trapped inside her own head. It only got worse as her mother continued, clearly not one to be deterred by her own memories.

“And that response tells my mother’s intuition that you are hardly sleeping alone either. So spill. What handsome young buck gets to share your pillow? Or…” Ana’s smile grew into something utterly conspiratorial, and Fareeha felt the desire to shout for a rescue rise in her throat. Who would come help her from her own mother, though? She was alone. Truly forsaken. “...is it a lovely lady that you’ve won over with your Amari charm?”

Death. A swift death was surely the only escape. If only…

Her prayers for a distraction suddenly seemed to be answered when Ana’s hawkish gaze slid from her, looking at something behind her shoulder and then waving amicably.

 _Good_. Fareeha turned around gratefully. Let someone else preoccupy her mother while—

 _Great God why this_?!

“Angela!” Ana called out to where the good doctor had stopped to wave at them, caught in her walk across the outside of the main building toward one of the adjacent lab facilities. “Why don’t you come join us for some tea?”

Fareeha tried with every fiber of her being to silently and telepathically indicate to Angela that she should most certainly say ‘ _no, I’m sorry but I have some fabulously work-intensive and world-changing science project to attend to_ …’.

Her attempts utterly failed as Angela walked across the grass toward them. “Well, I do have a bit of down time right now…”

No, Angela, _no…_

“Excellent! Here, let me pour you a cup…”

There was the momentary shuffle as Angela sat down, raising a bemused eyebrow at whatever face Fareeha was making. Clearly Angela had yet to recognize her ‘panic and run away’ face. They were going to have to talk about this later. If Fareeha lived long enough.

“Now,” continued Ana, her eye falling back on Fareeha, already saying quite well that she had not forgotten what their prior conversation had been about. “Perhaps you can help us with a conundrum.”

“ _Omi!_ ”

“Oh, shush.” Ana paid no heed to the attempted protest, while Angela regarded them both curiously over the rim of her teacup. “You see, my daughter is being less than forthcoming. A mother simply wants to know about the mysterious woman than her daughter is dating. Is that so much to ask?”

“Oh?” Angela raised her eyebrows at Fareeha. “I’m afraid I can’t help there.”

Thank the heavens. Hopefully now her mother would—

“Is she pretty?” asked Ana, utterly undeterred.

Fareeha practically choked.

“Mum _, please_!”

“What? A mother has to make sure her daughter has only the best.”

Fareeha spared a desperate glance toward Angela, but found her lips pressed together as if suppressing a smile. “Well? Is she?”

Left out to dry.

“Y-yes,” she stuttered, feeling the flush rise from her neck and up into her face. She stared down into her mostly empty tea, muttering. “She’s beautiful.”

She didn’t miss the sharp inhalation of breath from Angela.

“Oho!” exclaimed Ana, giving a toothy grin. There was a faint but sure blush coloring up Angela’s neck now as well. “So she’s a looker. But is that it? Just looks and vanity, I suppose? That’s how she managed to ensnare you.”

“Ana…” began Angela gently, clearly now intending to step in, but Fareeha responded sharply, staring down her mother. Something defensive bubbled up in her chest, giving power to her voice and clarity to her words.

“She’s nothing less than brilliant at what she does. One of the best, even if she never gives herself credit. And she’s caring beyond measure, putting the lives of the people around her before her own. She’s like no one else.”

“Smart, pretty, kind…” Ana ticked off through all of the traits. “Seems almost too good to be true, the way you’d have me see this mystery woman of yours. Superstar, practically. All those things make you happy then?”

Fareeha shook her head. “No...because all of those are just traits. They make me happy for her, but they aren’t individually what makes me happy with her. _She_ is what makes me happy. Every last strength and fault to her. The way she works herself to the bone, the way she needs her coffee fix or is unbearably grumpy, the way she laughs and smiles when she can be dragged away from work...and the way she sees a beauty in all the little things of the world, and the way she shows that beauty to me.”

Tongue suddenly tied, Fareeha stopped. She’d never strung together so many...so many nigh poetic words in her life.

Her mother still didn’t even blink though.

“Sounds like you practically love this magical woman,” challenged Ana.

Fareeha couldn’t help it. Her gaze slid automatically to Angela, whose face was now an unmistakable cherry red. She enunciated every last word as clearly as she could manage.

“I do love her. More than I ever thought I could love anyone.”

Silence. Then Ana suddenly reached across the small table, grabbing Fareeha’s hand with one of hers, and Angela’s hand with the other.

This time when she spoke, her voice was not sharp but gentle, rich with an emotion Fareeha had rarely heard from her mother. It was the same echo of what she had heard and felt when they hugged earlier. Her mother squeezed her hand tight for a long second.

“Then treasure and nurture what you have with one another, and never take for granted that gift of love.”

Ana gave a last squeeze, and then let both of their hands go.

 _Wait_.

“You...you _knew_?” Fareeha’s voice squeaked out at the end, no room to even be indignant before the sudden revelation.

A broad smile cracked across her mother’s face, growing wider and wider until the howling laughter escaped, raucous and crackling.

Fareeha didn’t put two and two together until she turned, shellshocked, to Angela and saw that her girlfriend was trying and utterly failing to hide her own laughter.

“You...she...you _both_ already knew?”

Ana finished with a loud and barking laugh, tears of mirth still gathering at the corners of her eyes. Angela gave a more subdued chuckle, but couldn’t hide the amusement from her face either.

“I am sorry, _mein chäferli_ , truly, but I could not resist teasing you a bit at first here. Your mother cornered me in the med bay weeks ago and brought it up over the course of our conversation. There was just so much else going on…” Angela’s blue eyes slid between Ana and Fareeha alike, and Fareeha did indeed see the glimpse of apology in them, and understood better. “...it honestly didn’t cross my mind to bring it up. I assumed up until now it was something you two had already discussed.”

“Never doubt a mother’s intuition!” Ana still had a grin plastered to her face. Clearly she had enjoyed this far too much. Suddenly, she stood, waving a hand. “Bah! These old bones need stretching.”

As if. Still, Ana gave them a gentler smile now, eyes glimmering with something full and surprisingly soft.

“Besides, this is the kind of afternoon meant for young lovebirds, not old ladies like myself.”

When Fareeha and Angela alike opened their mouths to protest, Ana cut them off.

“I remember how little time you get in Overwatch. Life is too short, _habibti_. Make the most of what you can while you can.”

Then she gave one last wave and made her way back into the building.

Leaving the two of them suddenly as bashful with one another as if they hadn’t spent the better portion of the last year dating.

Angela’s eyes fluttered with uncertainty, and her fingers drummed against the ground, a nervous habit that Fareeha had picked up on some time ago.

“I did not mean to overly tease you, Fareeha,” offered Angela, looking remorseful. “I hope you aren’t upset.”

Fareeha shook her head. “Come here.”

She wasn’t angry, truly. She wrapped one arm around Angela, pulling her closer so that Angela could rest up against her chest, could feel that no grudge was held. Angela’s contented sigh was half heard and half felt, and Fareeha pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

“I’m not upset.”

“Good,” murmured Angela. Then she twisted around and up.

“Besides,” Angela whispered in her ear, her voice dipping toward something that Fareeha very, very much preferred no one else hearing—least of all her mother. “I promise to be _very_ good and make it up to you later tonight.”

Fareeha shivered appreciably despite the warm and early taste of summer air. Well. That would certainly give her something to think about for the rest of the day.

They lounged there for some time, Fareeha happy simply to have Angela at her side, to think of nothing more than how blue the sky was overhead, how green the grass was beneath them, and how lucky she was indeed to even know Angela.

As if her thoughts had been wandering down a similar path, it was Angela who broke the silence, her voice quiet but sure, unwavering as ever.

“I love you, Fareeha.”

Fareeha smiled, warm, content to lay here with Angela for an eternity. She kissed Angela’s head again, tightening the arm around her briefly.

“I know...I love you, too.”


End file.
